Holidays and commemorative dates:
Day of emergency medical care – the date when doctors and other medical personnel who are the first to come to help, and thanks to whom millions of lives have been saved, are honored.
Sun Protection Day – it is not for nothing that the end of May was chosen, on the eve of hot days and holidays. The holiday is designed to draw attention to the negative impact of excess ultraviolet light on human health, because frequent excessive exposure to direct sunlight can cause burns, heatstroke or sunstroke, the formation of pigment spots and even cancer.
Duct Tape Day – On May 27, 1930, the American Richard Drew patented a transparent adhesive tape – scotch tape. He worked in a car workshop and invented scotch tape, so that it was more convenient to paint cars – to draw straight lines on cars.
Events on this day:
1753 — completed construction of St. Andrew’s Church in Kyiv.
1821 — the Mykolaiv Astronomical Observatory was founded.
1840 — Niccolò Paganini, Italian violinist and composer, died in the city of Nice.
Contemporaries of the genius recall that the violinist was a rather gloomy and withdrawn person, and truly lived only on stage with a violin in his hands. But how he lived on stage! At concerts, he arranged real performances with sound imitation – he “buzzed”, “hummed” and “talked” with strings, he was able to imitate the singing of birds and human laughter, the sound of flutes, trumpets, horns, mooing of cows, and used various sound effects.
It is said that he had a musical virtuoso gift from birth. In addition, the genius had a pathology in the tendons of the hands, as a result of which the fingers could bend a lot even in the other direction, which allowed to achieve unique sounds. However, throughout his life, Niccolò Paganini practiced playing the violin almost every day, spending 2-3 hours, or even more. He himself claimed that the secret of his mastery lies in “a complete and inseparable spiritual fusion with the violin.” But it was easier for society to invent a terrible legend that he sold his soul to the devil for his talent. It is noteworthy that the violinist himself not only did not deny these rumors, but also fueled them in every possible way in order to maintain interest in his own person. The musician said that he had a special secret that he would reveal only on his deathbed.
The master never revealed his secret, he only wrote that “the violin took all my strength.” This was enough for the story of the deal with the devil to take root in people’s minds so much that the bishop even refused to hold a funeral mass for the musician.
Niccolò Paganini was secretly buried in the town of Val Polchevera, next to his father’s country house. Only 19 years later, his son Achilles managed to have the remains reburied in the cemetery in Parma.
Paganini bequeathed his most favorite violin (he first picked it up at the age of 17 and kept it until his death) to Genoa, his hometown, because he did not want anyone else to play the instrument after him. According to legends, this violin was given to the musician by the devil. It is still kept in the museum in a special display case, in which certain conditions are maintained – a temperature of 20 degrees and a humidity of up to 50%. The instrument is called “Paganini’s Widow”. Once a month, a specially appointed curator takes the violin out of the display case and plays the works of Niccolò Paganini.
Artist Eduard Okun was so impressed by the story of Paganini’s deal with the devil that he decided to paint a picture based on it. The master embodied on the canvas the moment when the unclean came to the musician to pay the bills. Today, the mystical canvas is exhibited in Lublin among the exhibits of the Lublin Voivodeship Museum.
1859 — born Panas Saksaganskyi, Ukrainian actor and director, theater actor, founder of the People’s Theater in Kyiv; brother of Ivan Karpenko-Kary, Mykola Sadovsky and Maria Sadovsky-Barilotti.
1895 — English inventor Birt Acres patented a movie projector.
1910 — Robert Koch, German microbiologist, one of the founders of modern bacteriology and epidemiology, Nobel Prize laureate, passed away.
1937 — in San Francisco, a bridge over the Zolote Voro strait was opened. It is included in the list of the most beautiful cities in the world.
